Diy oscilloscope

I saw where you can make an oscilloscope out of an old black and white tv . I do not know a lot about electronics but this looked easy and it was when I got done I played my Theremin thought the scope looks very cool! The web sight is hackaday.com/.../ I sugest doing this if you can. If any one knows of mods to add to the tv/scope post them. thanks

are usually not a good combination. Cathode ray tubes and their high voltage supplies are nothing to be trifled with if you're not really sure of what you're doing. There are much better projects for beginners!

Using an old CRT television is (unless you absolutely know what you are doing) both dangerous and pointless.

TV's use magnetic deflection, CRT's in oscilloscopes use electrostatic deflection - magnetic deflection is too slow for direct use in any reasonable 'scope.. so any idea about getting inside a TV and messing with the deflection circuits to directly drive X from a timebase and Y from an amplifier is a waste of time (I know this from bitter expierience trying to make a 'scope this way when I was a teen)

This leaves the option of digitising the signal, storing it, and replaying it at line rate (15.625kHz if I remember correctly) synced to the frame frequency - you need to build a full digital TV output stage generating sync pulses etc, and 'drawing' the waveform.. I did exactly this for Lord Medical Ltd (The company Jeremy Lord Synthesisers became when the synth market collapsed) back in the early '80's and this was fine for 'chart recorder' replacement displaying ECG's etc - but was limited to about 1kHz max.. This design had a large board full of TTL and memory, and was not a cheap or easy project.

Today we have PC's and all the hardware and memory (undreamed of power, back in the 80's) is sitting on your desk - Your sound card is a perfect A to D for implementing a 'scope for use at audio frequencies.. Software to turn your PC into a 'scope is readily available.. If you need a real scope, 20MHz 2nd hand analogues are available cheaply..

It is a catch 22 - You need a scope to learn electronics, and until you have learned electronics 'hands on' using a scope, you are not in a position to try making your own!